The Oilers haven’t been winning very much lately, but Oilers GM Steve Tambellini says their early winning ways weren’t just an aberration.
Tambellini addressed the state of his team at the halfway point and while they’ve slumped back to the bottom three in the Western Conference, he told Jim Matheson of the Edmonton Journal that he thinks the Oilers can turn it on all over again and get back into things.
“The first month and a half of this season showed our capabilities. It wasn’t an illusion, not to me,” said Tambellini. “If you look at our team when our defence is healthy and our goaltending is the way it was then, that’s the type of hockey I think we can play.”
It might not have been an illusion to him, but it’s certainly looking that way now. The Oilers have lost 12 of their last 15 games and have gone from being at the top of the Northwest Division to being 17 points behind first place Vancouver. The play of Nikolai Khabibulin and Devan Dubnyk as well as a host of injuries to the defense have turned them into the same Oilers we’ve seen the last few seasons.
Even with great play by the young stars Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Jordan Eberle, and Taylor Hall haven’t been enough to get them back on the winning side. If Tambellini wants to turn things around in Edmonton, perhaps taking a look at things without rose-colored glasses would help.